10 X-Men comics from the 90s, not bagged or boarded, $80 (these are worth more as kindling)
Lot of 700 comics (again, common ones from the 90s) $3,000. Rofl, wtf?
8gb 1st gen ipod touch, trade for art supplies. Ah, ok, cool, I happen to have about $300 of art supplies, most never used, leftover from an art class. I email the guy and describe what I have. He writes back, “oh I just want some markers.” Ummmm, ok, what do you want for the ipod? “Well, I’d be willing to take $200 if it was cash, in the next 24 hours [goes on to describe how his friend’s dog ate his $40 usb cord so I’m “really” getting the unit for $160 ]” Lol, wtf? These are going for $159 on Amazon, with no teethmarks on them.
Garmin Forerunner 305 - $200. They’re about $170 new. I send an email offering $150 and get a bitchy response asking why EVERYONE OFFERS $150!
[Tons of random items] “I’ve had it for 4 years and I just want what I paid for it.” Lol, seriously? Don’t understand depreciation or just don’t think it applies to you?
Funny thing, sometimes the opposite is true - especially with kids stuff. I think people get sick of looking at that crib or old baby clothes or whatever, and they just want some token amount for it and have it GONE.
Frequently you’ll see the phrase “need this gone today!” and “don’t call, just come get it!”… I’ve picked up some smokin’ deals this way.
There was a comic book bubble in the 90s. Savvy “investor” types were hearing that 40-year-old ultra-rare limited-edition comic books were going for tens of thousands, so (for some reason) people started buying up new comic books by the truckload hoping that in 40 years they’ll be ultra valuable, too.
They didn’t consider that the valuable books are valuable because they’re rare (early books had very short runs, many people didn’t keep them, and lots were lost to fires/floods/alieninvansions), and because they’re important historically. Action Comics #1 is a little more significant than Astonishing X-Men #374. And modern comics are in abundance. They’re usually over-printed, several copies are vaulted, and people know to hang on to them now.
So, the geniuses who heard “comic books = gold” back then and decided to start buying some have probably gotten tired of waiting for them to “mature” and want to offload them now without seeing what’s worth what. I imagine the same is happening with Beanie Babies.
A lot of people on CList like to “negotiate” prices down. Someone sees something listed for $400, they’ll try to offer “$140 cash right now takeitorleaveit!!!” Knowing this, some sellers might list things artificially high so the buyers will have the thrill of talking the price down.
I’ve sold a few sorta-expensive things (TVs, laptop), all things over $500. Whenever I’ve done so, I always put the list price at about $200 more than I’d really expect to get (but never more than it’s worth). Most of the time, someone eventually offers the asking price (usually people who don’t know what they’re getting), so I can feel like I made an extra $200 on the deal.
Aside: People who want to “trade” are not worth dealing with. They never know what anything’s worth. If they did, they’d buy/sell with real money and then buy whatever they wanted to trade for.
I was selling a MacBook Pro worth $1500 on CList, and someone offered me an “almost new” gateway desktop for it. Do you think someone who deals in MacBook Pros has any interest in a crappy windows desktop? Dummies. When I eventually got my $1500, I used it to buy a brand new Mac, and not a 3 year old Gateway.
The “I want what I paid for it” phenomenon is the norm for LCD monitors and televisions on Craigslist in just about every market. It’s nearly impossible to find a used flat-screen television or LCD monitor priced for more than a few bucks less than what a newer model with more features would cost new. I frequently see old 15" 4:3 LCD monitors priced higher than new 19" 16:9 monitors.
I will sell you over 16,000 comics for $7000. Is that a better price?
Seriously, what is the bulk rate for comics these days. So much $$$ for 100 books, a flat price per long box?
Anyway, then you have the opposite on Craiglist when people place ads for things they want and when you answer and give them a price they feel that you should sell the item to them for practically nothing or free. I guess because they placed the want ad it gives them some sort of discount.
On the other hand, some people post stuff not realizing what they have. We got a dinning room set by a designer we like for $400 that you’d never be able to find for less than $1,800 from a legitimate dealer and we went to a dresser that was also from a worthwhile designer. It was too big for our space, but we felt compelled to let the person know that $400 was more appropriate than the $75 she were asking, and showed her the manufacturer’s mark she should photograph as proof of authenticity.
My sister’s girlfriend also makes a killing buying and selling artwork that way.
Yeah, it’s worked both ways for what I’ve seen. My favorite is when I saw someone link a sofa they were selling, but they didn’t have a picture so they linked to the original vendor’s website- the vendor was selling it for $70 less than the person on Craigslist. (I’m assuming they were trying to get what they paid and the $70 was the delivery fee. Still!)
On the other hand, last week I picked up a garden fountain, obviously hand-thrown and gorgeously made, for 20 bucks. It’s like what ebay used to be!
I had an old beat up rug on my living room floor, the corners were shredded, the edges were frayed and it had a bunch of cat hair on it. I bought a new rug and instead of hauling the old one to the dump, I thought I would see if someone wanted it. I placed an ad in the free category on CL accurately describing the rug and suggested it would be a great rug for a garage. I even included a picture of the rug.
About 45 minutes after I placed it in front of my place with a free sign, I hear two people talking in raised voices. I go outside and find and old guy and a young gal arguing over the rug. Each claims they were there first and that the rug belongs to them. The guy offers $20 for the rug, the gal counters with $25. He comes back with $40. She offers $45. He says $50. She says he can have it.
Yeah, that’s about it. And people think that just because something is marketed as a “collectible” it’s actually worth something. Like all those Franklin Mint knick-knacks…they’re just dustcatchers, is all. Now, if they appeal to someone, and that someone has money burning in his pocket, fine. But I think that Franklin Mint overprices their merchandise to give the customer the sense that he’s really going to be able to cash in on this item later on.
Beanie Babies made me want to strangle people and beat their heads against the wall. They’re just really cheap stuffed toys. Yeah, some of them are cute. But they really weren’t made to stand the test of time.
I lived through the comic book bubble, and resisted it.
My daughter worked in two different used book stores, one an independent, and one was a Half Price Books. In both places, people came in with their Reader’s Digest Condensed Book collection, expecting to get a really good price. The only use that used book stores have for RDCBs are to sell by the yard, for decorating purposes, and for crafts. Some people love to alter books, which means cutting them up, adding things to them, and generally making a collage out of a book. For a while, there was a fad of making purses out of books. To my mind, RDCBs are excellent for crafting purposes, because the crafter isn’t destroying a real book.
My daughter is in art school and for a sculpture class, she had to make a freeform sculpture out of an alternate material, and she chose books. She got the books at Goodwill. She ended up buying a bunch of RDCB for a couple bucks. She cut them up, ripped them apart, stacked them together and wired and glued them together and the final result was pretty neat.
I was perusing the books at my local Goodwill, and a woman was loading up a cart with all the RDCB, plus whatever else ‘looked pretty.’
She remarked that she wasn’t going to read them - she’d just moved into a house with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and had nothing to put on them and thought the RDCBs would look nice. I cried a little inside.
Oh, on topic: My problem with CraigsList are the people who think it’s a yard sale. I’ve put some things up for sale recently, for fair prices. In the $30-$40 range. I’d get people offering a dollar or two.
I wasn’t over-pricing the things, because I’d end up getting legitimate offers and selling it, it was just the nuts that seemed to think offering a buck was going to work.
Yeah, I always cry when I think about people who purchase books by the yard, too. I have to pack my books in boxes and rotate them in and out of the storage sheds, because we don’t have enough shelves (we’ll never have enough shelves) and many of my favorite books cannot be easily found in libraries, so if I want to re-read them on occasion, I must own them.
My oral surgeon has a neat way of storing patient records. Shelving units on tracks. This way, instead of having an access aisle between each pair of shelves, you just turn the crank and the shelves slide back and forth on the tracks, and you can have a solid wall of shelves facing each other, and the access aisle between whichever pair of shelves you need it to be. Every time I go there, I drool.
My favorite is when jokers promise to pay, say, $50 for an item, then show up and say “all the cash I have is $40” I fell for that once, luckily it was for low priced items. But never again. You don’t bring the money you promised you’d pay, GTFO, find and ATM, and come back!
On the other side of that, I bought my washer and dryer off craigslist. The girl had moved out of her old place and needed to meet me there to load it into the van. We showed up at the same time, and just as we got them outside I remembered I’d forgotten to get cash! I apologized and went to the nearest 7-11 to get some bux and came back.
I really think electronic equipment is the worst for this type of seller. People not only fail to realize that the stuff in their possession has lost value by the simple virtue of being used, they also often don’t keep track of the price of new equipment, and thus fail to realize that the stuff they own can now be purchased brand new for less than what they are asking for.
I had an experience like this a couple of years back when looking for a camera. It wasn’t on Craigslist, but the scenario is pretty much the same. I wrote about it in a previous thread:
On the other hand, i still really like Craigslist, especially for non-electronic stuff that has a high turnover rate. There are always heaps of desks, chairs, things like that available, so prices tend to be good.
When we arrived in San Diego last year, i needed a new desk, because my old one had been left behind in Baltimore. All i wanted was a fairly plain desk large enough to hold two computer monitors. It didn’t need drawers or anything. It just needed to have decent surface area, and be sturdy. After about two days of looking on Craigslist, i found an Ikea desk that was perfect for my needs. It was in perfect condition, and cost less than half what a new one would have cost at Ikea. Score.
Yeah, those people are idiots. I’ve only ever sold a few things on Craigslist, but i always swore that if someone tried that shit i would refuse to sell them the item on principle, even if they came back with the money.
I’ve got no problem with haggling, or asking about a reduced price. We sold an old office chair last year. It was still in good condition, but we had no use for it. I put it up for $35 or $40 (can’t remember), and the woman who emailed to ask if it was still available wanted to know if i’d take $30. I said sure; she turned up with $30. Deal done.
“Well, I’d be willing to take $200 if it was cash, in the next 24 hours [goes on to describe how his friend’s dog ate his $40 usb cord so I’m “really” getting the unit for $160 